


who are we to wonder where we're going?

by neontetraskill (atomiceyes)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Music!AU, Not Beta Read, Suicide Attempt, not explicit, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22503820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomiceyes/pseuds/neontetraskill
Summary: It happened slowly, the more time that they spent together the more Adam shared the pieces of himself. Small nuggets of information in stark contrast to Ronan’s uncharacteristic outpouring of secrets and vulnerability. Ronan consumed each detail and filed it away in the deepest part of his heart where he was assembling the lovely puzzle that was Adam Parrish.ORThe one where Adam is a famous Pop Star and Ronan is a DJ and all Ronan really wants is to love Adam and make music with him.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 16
Kudos: 83





	who are we to wonder where we're going?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thiswholeflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiswholeflight/gifts).



> Based upon an active AU Roleplay with thiswholeflight where we have basically ruined each other. There's a slim chance I'll write more but this is kind of background of where Ronan is at the start of the story and how his life differs from Canon. 
> 
> Also this is mostly Ronan's perspective and my first TRC fic though I've been roleplaying for years.
> 
> Song title from "Netflix Trip" by AJR

The first time Ronan Lynch saw Adam Parrish he was eighteen years old. The other boy was covered from head to toe in too-expensive clothes that didn’t suit him and a perfectly coiffed haircut. Adam Parrish's soulful eyes stared back at him from a glossy album cover. He’d picked up the record after hearing a single song called “Passenger Seat” from, with or perhaps without irony, the passenger seat of the Pig. 

The song first graced his eardrums two days after he had given up and allowed his pain to pour from his veins. It was something poppy, the music itself wasn’t really Ronan’s style, but the voice littering through the enclosed space was something different. The voice was nothing short of captivating, it sung through his veins and lit something inside him aflame. 

In secret, Ronan bought Adam Parrish’s album and listened to every single song until his vinyl was worn down and his brother wanted to kill him. Declan never cared much for Ronan or his music, not because it was particularly bad but because Ronan and music were synonymous with Matthew and Declan getting left behind. And truthfully, Ronan knew that his brother loved him to death, but he liked to pretend otherwise because it made their distance seem somehow acceptable.

\--

When he was eight years old, Ronan picked up an old out of tune violin from among his father’s things. Without much thought, he began to play and what came from the strings was not yet brilliance but Niall Lynch thought it was the promise of something more. 

Ronan was immediately enrolled in music classes, he mastered the violin before he was ten, the piano by eleven and was bored of them both by twelve. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t like music, Ronan felt music down to his very soul, it was that he hated the structure and the demand for perfection from the classical training he’d received. He was chaos incarnate and everything inside him wanted his music to reflect that. He wanted more for his fingertips than repeating a master’s work. He wanted to break all the rules and be celebrated, not admonished, for it. 

When Ronan was thirteen he picked up a guitar and then the bass, he experimented with the drums when Gansey tried to put together a band at fifteen. The rest of them gave up when they realized that music was hard. Noah preferred skateboarding anyway and Gansey wasn’t much of a singer or guitar player. 

Gansey threw slurs like prodigy and virtuoso at him. His best friend wasn’t very good at insults - or meaning them.

\--

Ronan’s life changed when he was seventeen. He still had violin practice twice a week because he couldn’t say no to his father. He had prepared himself to be yelled at for running late when he stepped outside of the main house at the barns. What greeted him was the telltale shoe peeking out from behind the BMW and Ronan’s heart sinking in his chest. 

His violin case slipped from his grip, he still doesn’t remember moving forward and looking. He doesn’t remember dropping to his knees by his father’s body. He doesn’t remember how the blood got onto his shirt, right over his heart. He definitely doesn’t remember screaming or Declan roughly pulling him back.

What he did remember was his mother, staring out the window after the police had left, her gaze focused on the stains in the driveway. He remembered how broken she looked and how she barely ate for days after that. He remembered Declan calling doctor after doctor hoping for a different answer so that he wouldn’t have to send their mother to some psychiatric hospital. He remembered the small dark corvid that began following him around as if she could sense his despair. Ronan remembered the lawyer that came to their house with their father’s will and the illusion of Niall Lynch being shattered by the realization that they had to leave the Barns immediately. The sudden knowledge that no one could return until Ronan turned 21 and the property moved to his name.

He spent the next half a year in and out of crippling depression, Gansey and Declan traded off watching him for fear that he’d hurt himself. Their fear finally came to fruition when he was eighteen, roughly six months after his father died. He wanted to claim that it wasn’t intentional and that he hadn’t been trying to end his own suffering. 

The hard truth was Ronan was tired of the pain, he was exhausted from feeling so much and not being able to do anything about it anymore. Music meant nothing, driving his father’s car was impossible without violent retching when the engine roared to life, grief was thick in his veins and Ronan wanted nothing more than to divest himself of it altogether. 

The thing that saved him wasn’t his friend’s concern or Declan’s steadfast presence at his side in the hospital. It wasn’t Matthew’s tear-stained face that honestly broke Ronan’s heart into a million pieces. What saved Ronan Lynch from utter despair was the dulcet tones of a breakout musician’s voice. Not the lyrics, even though they weren’t half bad. It was the feeling he got when he listened to how the singer wrapped his voice around the words of the song. 

\--

He moved in with Gansey a week after he got out of the hospital. Declan and Matthew moved to DC when the elder got a job opportunity that he couldn’t refuse shortly thereafter. Ronan missed Matthew terribly and tolerated Declan’s overbearing phone calls to check in on him even if it was mostly Gansey who got the brunt of his brother’s worry. He’d never admit that he felt a little bit like a life preserver had been removed from his proximity with his family gone.

He picked himself up out of the ashes of his own head. Ronan tried pretty hard to get back into music again, anything to make him feel. It wasn’t much of anything he could feel proud of at the time though. He tried writing a song and it was fucking shit - even Gansey agreed and Ronan was pretty sure that his best friend would have lied if he thought it would actually help him. Noah definitely laughed when he read it. 

He still played music, struggled with his sexuality, dated at least one horribly inappropriate man when he was twenty and obsessed with drag racing. Kavinsky had been a self-destructive, highly intolerable, and unwittingly easy mistake. Ronan’s life moved on, he got over his aversion to driving his father’s car and claimed the BMW as his own. Not that either of his brothers had even wanted it. 

\--

It was his twentieth year when his mother was released from the hospital into Declan’s care and less than three weeks later that she’d bailed completely on them being a family. Ronan couldn’t help but feel like Declan did something to make her run, even if it was increasingly unfair of him to put that on his brother’s shoulders. Declan was different after that and all Ronan could imagine was that he was pissy at himself for another failure. First Ronan and then Aurora. It took all Ronan had not to fall apart again, not knowing if she was okay or alive. Instead he got his first tattoo, a deceptively simple date inked into his skin and faux bloodstains surrounding it. Gansey, decidedly, did not approve. Ronan, frankly, did not care. 

When he was twenty-one, Ronan moved back into the Barns with Gansey. They slowly remade the house a home, renovating a few of the rooms, making it a place that was theirs. It went without saying that Gansey was a platonic soulmate and Ronan would never be able to live without him. It also went without saying that a small part of him would always be a little bit in love with his best friend. Noah moved in sometime later but was rarely ever there. Even Henry basically had his own room, despite being Ronan’s least favorite friend gained from their Aglionby days and Gansey taking in strays. 

When Gansey brought up the idea of renovating one of the actual barns and making it a studio, Ronan agreed in a haphazard sort of way. He hadn’t stopped playing music but hadn’t been an intrinsic part of his life since he broke the string of his violin on the day his father was murdered. The feeling of taking more of the barns for himself than he already had twisted something in his gut. Ronan let Gansey soundproof the whole thing, put in some rooms, and build a lackluster studio that he said was Ronan’s to do with as he pleased. Ronan knew it was meant to act as a kind of therapy or healing that he could never ask for himself. Gansey just knew him. 

At first, though, he didn’t use the space, then one day he found himself wandering aimlessly inside. The small soundboard and digital set up were simply begging to be used and he couldn’t find it in himself to refuse the call. Ronan found himself grabbing a newer vinyl record - the fifth version of the same album - adding it to the studio’s virgin library. The next thing he knew he was mixing it with a little bit of his own voice humming a tune. Eventually, he had repaired the strings on his violin and recorded various pieces of himself playing and singing. Before he knew what had happened or how much time had past - a day - he had remixed the entirety of Adam Parrish’s ‘Passenger Seat’ and found his fucking passion. 

He riped out half of what Gansey had gotten set up, dropped a bunch of cash on making it a real studio where he could do anything and everything he wanted. Then he told Gansey he wanted to be a DJ. Gansey was definitely not impressed but he was accepting of Ronan’s ambition. It was the most passion Ronan had shown in years. Declan was not as easily convinced but there wasn’t much that he could do to stop Ronan from pursuing this dream.

\--

Ronan built a DJ persona ‘L y n c h’, Gansey decided all on his own that he would be Ronan’s manager, and without much fanfare, his career was born. He celebrated his first show by getting a full back tattoo that made him feel like he had wings and claws. He quickly gained in popularity, and Gansey decided they would create their own label to release Ronan’s music because his friend didn’t trust fucking anyone with Ronan’s wellbeing. Apparently. They named their label the Barns and both held 50% shares in the company because Gansey insisted that Ronan have a real stake in his own future. 

Ronan always gave credit to the artists he sampled and his fans were loyal and diverse. He never played the same set twice and never shared his first mix with anyone. Also, it probably didn’t hurt that he never wore a shirt unless the weather demanded that he cover-up. 

Somehow, there was still something missing. It wasn’t anything contrite or maudlin like love or inner peace. Two years later, at twenty-three Ronan still felt a seething snake full of rage writhing under his skin. They’d signed some new artists to the Barns and Ronan was producing more than just his own music. He loved it everything about bringing out the best in another artist and helping them grow. He wasn’t racing anymore and there was nowhere to channel his chaos. 

On a whim, Ronan decided to cover his skin in all black clothing, including a turtle neck, throw on an intricate raven’s head mask he’d had made for Halloween, but never used, and booked a show where he mixed everything on the fly. His new spins were an amalgamation of punk, metal, and hardcore rock music that were a hit with some and made others want to murder him in his sleep. He called himself chainsaw after the raven that followed him around in the days after his father died. The rest was history. 

Chainsaw was completely separate than ‘L y n c h’ and Ronan liked it that way. Somehow he built up this air of mystery around himself. He gained a small following and they wildly speculated that he was a former convict who went to prison for arson and must have severely burned himself, resulting in the mask and clothing covering his entire body. They thought perhaps he was attacked by ravens as a child but then were perplexed that he donated all of his proceeds to the conservation of the Corvidae species of birds. 

He never released any albums and the only recordings of his music were fan-made and found on Spotify or other music sharing sites. There were even memes detailing how Chainsaw and famous celebrities were never seen in the same place at the same time. As if he was Batman and/or Bruce Wayne. Chainsaw was a cacophony of mystery and Ronan’s internal chaos. There were only two people in the world who knew that Ronan Lynch was behind the mask. Gansey and Blue Sargent. 

\--

Blue Sargent was a force of nature that Gansey and he had met at one of his ‘L y n c h’ shows. She was the bar manager at this local venue in Henrietta that had asked Ronan to play once. Gansey went home with her the first night they met and the two of them played some weird dance around each other for the next two years. They pretended that they were just hooking up and it was only when Ronan played. Much to his initial dismay, Blue became a fixture in their lives. Eventually, she lent a hand at the Barns working on the social media of the accounts of their artists, ‘L y n c h’ included. 

Ronan definitely did not secretly like her better when he found out she was the former bassist in an all-girl indie punk band called ‘Fox Way’ that had opened for Adam Parrish years before. 

Ronan understood Blue and she - him. He called her Maggot and she grinned back at him with a knowing look that told of understanding and friendship. She knew Ronan liked her and she knew it was because he understood that she loved Gansey, even if Gansey himself had no idea. Blue stumbled into his Chainsaw secret by mere proximity. He came home late from a show - Gansey was not allowed to attend because a) hated the angry music that Ronan favored and b) because he was a staple at ‘L y n c h’ shows. Blue came out of Gansey’s room in a button-down and nothing else, raised a brow at the raven’s head mast in Ronan’s hand, and then proceeded to grin. Apparently, she was a fan. 

\--

The first time Ronan Lynch saw Adam Parrish was on the cover of the latter’s first album. The first time Ronan Lynch saw Adam Parrish in person he was twenty-five and the latter was in the crowd at a ‘L y n c h’ show. Ronan recognized him immediately and tried not to think about the fact that his first song was a mix of one of the musician’s newest creations. Ronan didn’t miss the look that Adam Parrish sent his way when his mix began to play, it was riveting - echoing across the small space of the bar and directly into Ronan’s gut. There was supposed to be a break halfway through his show so he could pace himself and drink some water. He was going to meet Blue’s friend that was coming and then head back out. All of that went through the window as he played everything inside his soul that was bursting through his seams. 

The show had to end eventually and Ronan had to breathe and put on a mask of indifference. The indifference that lasted all of three minutes after meeting Adam Parrish - Adam. _Adam. Adam._

Ronan kept repeating the man’s name in his head as if it would calm the rush of emotional turbulence going on inside him. It didn’t. He had been mildly obsessed with Adam’s music since he was eighteen but he’d never put much stock into Adam Parrish as a person(a) - he knew that personas were really carefully curated fallacies. 

Meeting the real Adam sent Ronan reeling. He was hooked on the way Adam said his name and the way he seemed to appreciate, not disparage, the fact that Ronan used his work to make his own version of the same song. Adam even said it was better, called it genius. Ronan just thought it was different, even if that admission had his pulse soaring through the sky like a rocket ship bound for mars.

The truth was, Ronan wasn’t a fan of Adam Parrish’s songs, his look, or his public image. Ronan was a fan of Adam’s voice and the emotions it evoked in him. He used too many of the other man’s songs in his tracks to name but sometimes he only pulled the voice track to mix in with his own composition or to layer over other samples. He wanted the world to hear what Adam Parrish could really sound like when he wasn’t being overproduced by people who clearly didn’t know what kind of talent they really had on their hands. 

\--

He and Adam spent the next half hour just talking in the green room, ignoring Gansey and Blue altogether, and it was all Ronan could do not to ask Adam to press their lips together in silent prayer. Normally he’d have worried about his blatant attraction coming across as creepy but Adam was very clearly and very blatantly attracted to him as well. Before Ronan knew it he was at a restaurant with his friends and Adam, spilling nearly all of his secrets and making out in the bathroom. 

He begged Adam to come back to the barns with him; to spend the night and make music in the morning. Carefully told him secrets about his father’s death, his pet raven, and his monstrous persona. Adam took it all in and liked it.

And so, the first time Ronan Lynch heard Adam Parrish strum his fingers loosely along guitar strings and croon an old Tracey Chapman song in his kitchen, he was lost.

It wasn’t the night of sex that almost literally blew Ronan’s mind. It wasn’t those beautiful eyes or perfect cheekbones. It wasn’t the deepest of secrets and moments of vulnerability he allowed himself to share. It even wasn’t the breakfast they ate together or that his friends seemed to like Adam more than they liked Ronan. It was the easy intimacy and peace he felt within Adam’s orbit, the way his mere proximity made Ronan feel like there was some measure of goodness left in the world. 

\--

Adam told him what he was getting into before they ever took off their clothes. That his label held onto their prime asset so tightly he barely had a moment to himself. Adam couldn’t make his own choices about his music or his life and all Ronan wanted to do was release him from the chains that held him and his music back.

Ronan was promised a week, one that Adam was only allowed under the guise of seeing his parents. Parents that Ronan did not want the occasion to meet for fear of his own violent tendencies erupting. 

It happened slowly, the more time that they spent together the more Adam shared the pieces of himself. Small nuggets of information in stark contrast to Ronan’s uncharacteristic outpouring of secrets and vulnerability. Ronan consumed each detail and filed it away in the deepest part of his heart where he was assembling the lovely puzzle that was Adam Parrish. 

They spent that week together, losing themselves in music, the amenities of Adam’s hotel room, and each other. They avoided talking about their feelings but every single moment was rife with the oppressive need to show each other what they couldn’t put into words.

It didn’t mean it was perfect. Ronan was hidden away like a dirty secret, a fact that felt sour in his gut every time he remembered. He didn’t blame Adam for prioritizing his livelihood over a guy he’d just met. It just didn’t make it suck any less. 

There were lazy moments in bed where Ronan talked about his childhood and explained how many bones he’d broken during boxing lessons with his father. Moments when Adam held himself back from asking more questions that might lead to revealing truths he wasn’t ready to share. Ronan wanted to know everything, each morsel of delicious crumb that fell from their conversations but he didn’t press. He wasn’t afraid of pushing his lover away he just didn’t feel the need to coax a story or confession from someone he cared about. 

One thing became clear to Ronan, Adam was not miserable, exactly. He didn’t lament that he’d made the wrong choice when he signed away his life to a record label in order to escape an awful situation. What Adam was, by Ronan’s estimation, a prisoner. Even if the prison was, technically, of his own making. He was being stifled in all the ways that made someone creative slowly lose what made them special. His talent was being squandered and his music’s evolution halted in its prime. Adam deserved better, to express and create to his heart’s content. 

\--

On Adam’s last day in the city, Ronan awoke to a sleepy smile and an offer to go to Six Flags. Amusement parks had never been something Ronan had reason to frequent. Niall hadn’t believed in frivolous activities getting in the way of Ronan’s music and Aurora had never wanted to risk his wrath. Each of them put on pitiful disguises and spent the day pretending. 

They pretended that they were an actual couple, Ronan’s hand in the back of Adam’s jeans as they walked around, stolen kisses on the Ferris Wheel. They pretended they hadn’t fallen in love with each other and that they weren’t counting down the seconds until they had to say goodbye. 

Adam promised they weren’t going to say goodbye, that it was just until next time. The sentiment felt hollow to Ronan’s ears. It was undercut by the oppressive label Adam had to answer to and Ronan’s own insecurities about his own worth.

Because Ronan didn’t want a today or a tomorrow, Ronan wanted a forever and that was something Adam admitted he couldn’t give. 

\--

On the drive back to the hotel Ronan broke down and asked. If it was worth it. Would Adam change it all if he could? He hadn’t meant to be together - that was something they silently agreed was obvious - it was Adam’s music that he questioned. 

Would Adam like his life back, his soul, his very being that he poured into something so hollow and manufactured? What did Adam want, right then, at that moment? The quiet _“I want to evolve,”_ that escaped Adam’s lips was like someone smashed Ronan’s heart against his rib cage until it shriveled into something broken and lifeless. That and watching Adam’s back disappear as he walked away. 

It was a moment that broke Ronan and a moment when he realized what he had to do. As soon as he was home he called his lawyer and asked her to look into buying out Adam’s contract without making a mess of his life or career. He planned on offering a new contract in his place but didn’t expect Adam would take it, that wasn’t the point. 

If Ronan couldn’t have Adam at least he could give Adam back something that he had lost. Something that had saved Ronan when he was eighteen years old. 

His voice.


End file.
